Knowledge transfer and the university system’s functioning: need for change

Abstract

In the present university system, particularly in the discipline of public health, researchers are increasingly asked to deal with knowledge transfer as part of their research projects. When I started my PhD in Canada in 2001, I did not feel this pressure to not only produce knowledge, but also ensure that it will be applied. Today I have an academic position and I feel a stronger external pressure, evidence of which is also found in numerous public health scientific publications on the subject (1, 2). I use the word external to highlight that this requirement comes from outside the university system and our academic institutions, at least in North America. Research funding organizations overtly express today their requirement to transfer knowledge with the research they fund. I will use Canada as the example since this is the country I work in. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which are the main funders of health-related research, require researchers to provide an explanation in their protocol about how they will undertake knowledge transfer. The CIHR even have specific research funding for knowledge transfer and they finance Research Chairs to undertake work on this topic. The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) also have this as a central topic on its agenda. Moreover, knowledge transfer as a means to improve the Canadian health services has become one of CHSRF’s areas of expertise (3). To a lesser extent, organizations that deal a priori with evidence-based policy also require the same thing. The Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) finances only research in lowand middle-income countries. IDRC’s financing policy insists on the need to create links between researchers and decision makers in those countries in order to increase the application of research findings. This is a sine qua non condition to receive funds. The Global Health Research Initiative (GHRI) in Canada, which includes the IDRC, the CIHR, Health Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), have recently financed 13 research teams with over 20m Canadian dollars thanks to funding from TeasdaleCorti. The team members had to be imperatively North and South researchers and also more specifically co-researchers from the decision-making arena (4). The Quebec Population Health Research (QPHR) Network has carried out different work to better understand research needs on health knowledge transfer (5). The external university environment, in Canada and elsewhere, seems to consider knowledge transfer as a top priority in the discipline of public health. As a researcher concerned with the application of my research results, I can only sympathize with this requirement. With the exception of researchers in fundamental disciplines (history, literature, etc.), I cannot understand that our universities’ scientific communities and IUHPE members do not share this ambition. Having said this, my years of experience in this field and my actual position as a university researcher, lead me to think that the academic system is not yet adapted to the need to transfer knowledge. The university system does not support researchers engaged in knowledge transfer activities. In the North American system, where competition for